Psychology is the science of behavior and the mind. Behavior refers to the observable actions of a person or an animal. Mind refers to an individuals sensations and perception, memories, thoughts, dreams, motives, emotions and other subjective experiences. Science refers to all attempts to answer questions through the systematic collection and logical analysis of objectively observable data.
Fundamental ideas of psychology
The founding of psychology: 1879, Wilhelm Wundt.
3 fundamental ideas of psychology:
1. Behavior and mental experiences have physical causes that can be studied scientifically
2. The way people behave, think and feel is modified over time by their experiences in their environment.
3. The body machinery, which produces behavior and mental experiences is a product of a evolution by natural selection.
Descartes dualism
Dualism: the church maintained that each human being consists of two distinct but intimately conjoined entities, a material body and an immaterial soul. The body can be studies but soul cant be studied. Descartes dualism shifted the focus from the soul to the body by studying reflex. Descartes believed that even quite complex behaviors can occur through purely mechanical means, without involvement of the soul.
Restrictions of Descartes dualism:
- As a philosophy, it stumbles on the question of how a non material entity (the soul) can have a material effect (movement of the body) or how the body can follow natural law and yet be moved by a soul that does nog.
- As a foundation for psychology, the theory sets limits, on what can and cannot be understood scientifically. The whole realm of through, and all behaviors that are guided by thought, are out of bounds for scientific analysis if they are the products of a willful soul.
Hobbes materialism
In Hobbes's philosophy materialism, all human behavior can in theory be understood in terms of physical processes in the body, specially the brain. Conscious thought, he maintained, is purely a product of the brain's machinery and therefore subject to natural law.
- Reflexology: All human behavior occurs through reflexes - that even so-called voluntary actions are actually complex reflexes involving higher parts of the brain.
- Localization of function: the idea that specific parts of the brain serve specific functions in the production of mental
Empiricism vs Nativism
Empiricism refers to the idea that human knowledge and thought derive ultimately from sensory experience (vision, hearing, touch etc.). Locke viwed a child's mind as a tabula rasa (blank slate, and believed that experience serves as the chalk that writes on and fills the slate.
- Association by contiguity: If a person experiences two environmental events at the same time or one right after the other, those two events will become associated in the persons mind such that the thought of one event will, in the future, tend to elicit the thought of the other.
The opposite of empiricism is nativism, the view that the most basic forms of human knowledge and the basic operating characteristics of the mind, which provide the foundation for human nature, are native to the human mind - that is, are inborn and do not have to be acquired from experience.
- Kants knowledge: Immanuel Kant distinguished between a priori knowledge (built into a human brain) and a posteriori knowledge (gained from experience in the environment. Withouth the first, argued the nativists, a person could not acquire the second.
Biological and experience/knowledge cluster.
Biological cluster
- Neural explanations (behavioral neuroscience): All mental experiences and behavioral acts are products of the nervous system.
- Physiological explanation (bio psychology); study the ways hormones and drugs act on the brain to alter behaviors and experience.
- Genetic explanation
- Evolutionary explanation: All the basic biological machinery underlying behavior and mental experience is a product of a evolution by natural selection. One way to explain universal human characteristics, therefore, is to explain how or hy they came about in the course of evolution.
Experience/knowledge cluster
- Learning explanations: All forms of human behavior and mental experience are modifiable by learning, can be influenced by prior experience.
- Cognitive explanations: The term cognition refers to information in the mind. Such information includes thoughts, beliefs and all forms of memories. Some information is conscious and other unconscious.
[Difference between learning and cognitive explanation: Learning psychologists typically attempt to relate learning experiences directly to behavioral changes and relatively unconcerned with the mental processes that mediate such relationship. To a learning psychologist, experience leads to change in behaviors. To cognitive psychologist, experience lead to change in knowledge of beliefs and that change leads to change in behavior]
- Social explanation: Our behavior is strongly influenced by our perceptions of others. We use others as models of how to behave, and we often strive, consciously or unconsciously, to behave in ways that will lead others to approve of us.
- Cultural explanation: we can predict some aspects of a person's behavior by knowing about the culture in which that person grew up.
[Cultural and social psychology are very closely related but differ in emphasis. While social psychologists emphasize the immediate social influences that act on individuals, cultural psychologists strive to characterize entire cultures in terms of the typical ways that people within them feel, think and act]
- Developmental explanation: knowing a persons age enables us to predict some aspects of that person's behavior.